The Northwest Coast, a long, narrow strip of Pacific coast and off-shore islands, is a forested and misty land that stretches from Alaska’s Prince William Sound southward through British Columbia, Washington and Oregon, into the northwest corner of California. This Northwest Pacific Coast was densely populated even in pre-Columbian times; perhaps 150,000 people of a bewildering variety of tribes and languages lived all along the shoreline – an impressive number, especially considering that in this region long stretches of coast consisted of uninhabitable cliffs rising dramatically from the sea.
From Prince William Sound to the lower part of the Alaska panhandle and the islands off-shore lived the Tlingit, a wide ranging people whose language is believed to have been related to Athabascan. Like most people of this area, they fished for salmon and hunted sea animals, and occasionally even land animals. In the same region lived the related tribes of Sitka, Hona, and Chilcat. To their south, along the coast of British Columbia, into northern Washington and on Vancouver Island, lived the Kwakiutl, an aggressive people of Algonquian heritage, whose population of perhaps 15,000 dominated their much fewer neighbors, the Bella Coola. There also were several other Algonquian groups, the Klallam, the Lummi, and the Tulapi. How long these people had held this country no one knows. Some researchers think they may have been there for nearly as long as humans have occupied North America. When European traders first arrived in that area, they found there hundreds of villages in what had to have been the most densely populated region in all pre-Columbian North America. No doubt, it proved to be an excellent country for the Native American populations, just as it later did for white settlers.
About 8,000 Haida occupied Queen Charlotte Island off the coast of British Columbia and the southern part of Prince of Wales Island. They were primarily fishermen, of course, concentrating on the ever-present salmon, on halibut and cod, and they were particularly noted for the fine craftsmanship of their canoes. And the west coast of Vancouver Island was home to the Algonquian Nootka, who specialized in whale hunting in large open dugout canoes, and whose entire culture suggested ancient ties to the Eskimo of Alaska. One of the traits the Nootka shared with their Algonquian brothers, the Kwakiutl, was a propensity for raiding neighboring tribes – not only for plunder, but for slaves as well. The two tribes, in fact, made this part of the Northwest Coast the very center of Native American slave trade.

The Pacific Ocean, its infinite bays and inlets, and rivers feeding into them, all provided a generous food supply for all the native people. Salmon, in particular, was a food staple for most of the Indians from the Klamath River of northern California all the way to the mouth of the Yukon. At spawning time, when the salmon made their way up the rivers, they were caught in such enormous amounts that they became the principal fare for literally thousands of people along the coast. Only tribes like the Haida and the Kwakiutl, who lived on islands or in peninsulas without major rivers, depended more on food from the deep ocean waters – halibut and cod and whatever sea mammals they were able to catch. And everywhere along this coast, the sea provided them with shellfish and clams, with crabs, and mussels. But the coastal people did not have to exist entirely on seafood; though hunting was never an important part of their lives, they did occasionally kill deer and mountain sheep with bow and arrow, sometimes even elk. There also was the grizzly, who regularly came to feed along the salmon rivers, much as they still do in Alaska today, and there were wolves and foxes and otter and beaver. The women also collected berries and roots, and greens like clover and skunk cabbage, even edible seaweed. All this foodstuff was not only abundant, but it was a totally dependable, year round supply for the entire area; so much so, in fact, that the inhabitants were able to accumulate huge surpluses which were dried and stored in every village.
With such an abundance of food available at all times, hardship and hunger were all but unknown to the Indians of the Northwest Coast. While many of the native people of America were forced to spend much of their time in the search for food, leaving them with little time for much else, the Northwest Coast tribes led such leisurely lives that they were able to create a most unique civilization – a permanently settled society, complete class distinctions and honorary ranks, and so preoccupied with accumulating wealth and social status that it all but overshadowed every other aspect of their lives.
This very economy of the Northwest Coast demanded a more or less permanently settled population; as among agricultural people everywhere, there were seasonal periods when everyone in a community was needed to catch and clean and preserve the food; there also was equipment to be maintained and tool to be repaired throughout the year. As a result, permanent village appeared all along the coast, complete with substantial houses, fish-drying racks, with boats, storage areas, and all the equipment needed in their daily lives. Even if some of the men would at times leave their villages to go hunting, or to set out on periodic raids into the interior, their families remained behind, and the women continued with their own activities.